This invention relates to feeding apparatus for delivering cans from a feed chute to a mandrel wheel that is continuously rotating at very high speed, and is an improvement over the apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,458,804 issued July 10, 1984 to R. Williams and A. Rohr for Contour Infeed Means For Continuous Motion Can Decorator dramatically.
Continuous motion high speed can decorating apparatus of the type illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,563,170, 3,766,851 and 3,976,187 utilize freely rotatable mandrels to carry cans while decorations are applied to the latter. The cans are loaded on the mandrels from a continuously rotating pocket wheel having curved seats or pockets along the periphery thereof to receive undecorated cans from a feed chute that extends from a supply source. Typically, there is a feed screw and star wheel combination interposed between the supply source and the pocket wheel to space the undecorated can before they reach the pocket wheel.
At high speeds, say greater than of 800 cans per minute, the likelihood of cans being damaged by the feed screw or being jammed thereat increases dramatically. In attempting to avoid this problem, the prior art replaced the lead screw by a star wheel having vacuum applied to the pockets thereof in a timed sequence. While this resulted in spacing the cans prior to placement thereof into the pockets of the pocket wheel this did not provide a complete solution at high speeds since only very limited time was available to fully seat each can before it was directed axially to be picked up by a mandrel. Thus, the prior art found it necessary to experiment with modifying the pocket wheel surfaces leading into the pockets thereof, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,458,804. Unfortunately, at very high can speeds, say greater than 1200 cans per minute, the time for a can to become seated in a pocket wheel pocket is so short that axial movement of the can toward a mandrel commenced before the can was fully stabilized in the pocket. This resulted in misloading cans and/or damaging same.